So today I started and finished reading The Reader. (I'm not a speed reader, it's just a really quick read and not long at all). And by the way, this is the book made into the movie currently showing with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. Anyway, it's a tale about Michael Berg who at 15 begins an obsessive affair with Hanna, a mysterious older woman. He never learns very much about her, and as quickly as she came into his life, she one day disappears with Michael believing he'll never see her again. To his horror, however, he chances upon her while she's on trial for committing horrible crimes at a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. What follows is Michael's attempt to comprehend and accept not only his past but his generations. This is not a Holocaust novel but rather the struggle that Michael faces in the aftermath of the Holocaust and what to do with the guilt he and his generation feel for being German and thus a part of such a past. Definitely recommended. Interesting, compelling, dark and sad.
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